Graphic Identity: May 2008

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Biweekly Blogroll Links - May 31st 2008

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Graphic Poster # 0132 by Rui Vieira
Drawing Day 2008 by Fossfor
Good Tutorials by The Photoshopping Penguin
Rss Sign logo by GizmoHunt.com
Fredag! by LolitaBlog
Artist of the week - Andrei khrjanovski by Animatrick

WEB DESIGN and INTERNET
How to stop widgets been deleted when uploading templates by LawnyDesignz
Small Details of a Blog Design by LaurenMarie
Wikipedia Outranks Google for Googlebot - LOL! by Emory Rowland
Innovative Web Design: The First Step to Succeed Online by Janice Ramirez
Vhiel's Corner Layout by Vhiel
45+ Free Premium WordPress Themes with Magazine or Grid Layouts by Pavel Ciorici

PHOTOSHOP RESOURCES
Photoshop & Me by DCLOUD
How to Make a Vector Brush in Photoshop by Carrie (backlink post)
Free Photoshop Shapes Downloads - Mega List of Free Custom Vector Shapes for Adobe Photoshop - Part I by AllGraphicDesign.com

BLOGGING
Twitter explained in plain english by Dave Brenner
Make Your Posts More Readable for Your Readers and See the Wonders Yourself by Liane

COOL EVENTS AND STUFF
Be Organized with Pelotonics by Nelle
A Beautiful Journey: Part 6 - Events & Marketing by QuaChee
Kumpulan berita bohong (news article in Indonesian) by Permana Jayanta
Sexy green car show. 2008 by DesignApplause
My thoughts on the new Indiana Jones movie by Angelface79.blogspot.com

SELF AWARENESS POST
Eight reminders in overcoming greediness by Robert
Face It. Fight It. Survive It. by Psiplex.com
World : What's the Solution for Terrorism? by Selerines
Food combining by Achmad Zaenuri

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Fantasy Floral Photoshop Brushes - Part 5

It took a while for me to design another photoshop brush set and I've finally managed to design the Fantasy Floral Photoshop Brushes - Part 5. You will find 3 different brushes inside the download file.

I've designed simple swirl curls as I wanted to have Art Nouveau's design style. I think it is a good idea to design another series of Art Nouveau's style, after the Fantasy Floral Photoshop Brushes-Part 3 hits more than 25.000 Downloads and 185 Favorites at Deviant Art :D. Thank you all Deviant mates for the fave on my gallery.

Read More

Enjoy!

Each of brush is categorized as small in size (850px - 900px).

I would like to remind you that all of my 'Free Design Box' files are FREE (for personal or commercial use). But after I found that my previous Photoshop brushes set were hijacked by someone else, please read: Legal Usage to employ Graphic Identity's 'Free Design Box' files.

If you like my Photoshop Brushes please give comment before you download them because I will appreciate any feedback from you.

Don't miss out to download my next photoshop brushes series by subscribing to my feed!

NOTE :

I love your feedback, and that’s why these free design box files now has a plain .ABR file to download directly…I also included compressed .ZIP file instead of .RAR. file so you can unzip the smaller size file or extract the file later if you need it. (You must have WinZIP or WinRAR software installed to your computer for that).
Thanks to d3c3nt-gurl, who send me a feedback of how should I provide PNG files. Since this can be useful for PS 7 users.
Some of you probably don't know how to install brush set, and for that reason I have a quick tutorial: How to Install Photoshop Brush Set.

UPDATE:

The Downloads will not working properly in Mozilla Firefox browser
Opera and Internet Explorer are the most recommended browsers to have complete download files in your computer system

Graphic Identity - Fantasy Floral Part 5.abr (176.39 KB)

Graphic Identity - Fantasy Floral Part 5.zip (92.34 KB)

Graphic Identity - Fantasy Floral Part 5.rar (88.62 KB)

Graphic Identity - Fantasy Floral Part 5 (PNG).zip (146.56 KB)

Be sure to check this design set also
Fantasy Floral Vectors

Related Post:

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Biweekly Blogroll Links - May 17th 2008

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Star Wars Typography by Toon
Meticulous Design: Dramatic Headlines by Vivien
A half century of presidential campaign logo design by Jeff Fisher
Braintalk with Andrew Egenes by Sharebrain
The Color Wheel and Theory by Creative Curio
Why Computers Are Important To Designers by Modemlooper

WEB DESIGN
Change Your WordPress Admin Password! by afewgoodpens.com
The best CSS and Flash web galleries - Places to inspire by Alex

PHOTOSHOP RESOURCES
How to Convert the Photoshop Brushes to Paint Shop Pro Brushes, Fast and Easy Way by Graphic-Illustration.com
Design a Simple Rounded Content Box in Photoshop by OriginMaker

ART and PHOTOGRAPHY
Podcast - Terri St Cloud of Bone Sigh Arts by Zura
SPRINGTIME by Moonshadow

BLOGGING
Biggest and Most Comprehensive List of Money-Making Advertising Networks on the Net by Liane
30 Resource for Bloggers Carnival - 13th Edition by My Lucky Number 13
Make a Difference by Lauren
An Adsense Alternative? by Jordan McClements

TECH & GADGET
How to Protect Your PenDrive by Pachecus
Time Machine Coming Closer to Reality by Robert Di-Salvo

PERSONAL POST
Happy B' Day Swyty! by M.Fayaz

Friday, May 16, 2008

Graphic Identity Blog Updates

I have been checking out Graphic Identity blog stats performance over the past few months. The result shows me of how some graphic design articles, tutorials, and free design box posts has always been getting repeated visits on specific keywords, and it make me think to have things organized better.

I just add up few more features on the sidebars. You can see that now you can access the most popular post in this blog as I have list of “Most Commented Post” links. Beside featured post list that has image thumbnails for each link, I think by adding another kind of list would lead you more to numbers of resources that might be useful for you to read.
Another improvement for this blog is “Sideblog & Events” feature list that will show you the new updates of Graphic Identity and recent blogosphere news or events. You can find this link list at the bottom of very right sidebar.

Another thing that I want to mention for clarification is that now I don’t do link exchange. But if you want to link the Graphic Identity blog URL permanently to your blog, you will have a free website or blog design review from me. Just contact me via email if you are interested.

In June, Graphic Identity blog and friends who are also the members of Blog Catalog Graphic Design Group will start a regular graphic design blogging activity. I will tell you about the idea of this new event in another post soon, so you will get the details and drop us feedback or comment before we launch it. Just for a clue, this blogging activity will choose one of the blog’s participants every month as hosted blog for new round up blogging activity. As I thought this will be fun for you who have a new blog and you want to increase your blog authority and backlinks from related websites. What kind of activity that I mean exactly? :D Get the answer by subscribing to my feed now? So you won’t miss it ;)

OK, now it’s time for the main update of Graphic Identity blog. Here is a collection of articles round up and some recent posts that I wrote for other blogs in social blogging activity. I have also included the graphic designs I made after I’ve joined a contest and sponsoring few contest months ago.

Guest Post Blog

8 Effective Tips to Increase your Email Subscribers
edited by Abhinav Sood

Work on Increasing your Feedburner Email Subscribers!
edited by Abhinav Sood

Graffiti - Graphic Design Developed From Older Cultures
edited by Dale

Blogging Activity Events

Interviewing Jacob Cass!
submitted for Estetica Graphic Design Cross Interview event at Estetica Graphic Design Forum

Bloghology
Graphic Identity was interviewed by Mert Erkal for Bloghology E-book free download. Containing list of bloggers from across the world.

The Design Forums and Design Niche Social Media Sites you always wanted for
Submitted for Graphic Design Group Writing Project Articles at Just Creative Design

Things to Consider Before You Join a Flickr Pool
Submitted for Social Media Mega Project Articles at Epic Edits

Redditers – What They Tend to Do?
Submitted for Social Media Mega Project Articles at Inspiration Bit

Blog Action Day : Environmental Awareness
Submitted for Blog Action Day 2007 "Environment" theme

Graphic designs

Graphic Design Package for Christine Senter, the winner of Feed Flare Contest
Event: Contest Sponsor of Feed Flare 1st Contest at Feed Flare.com

Graphic Header Design for Dexter, the winner of Just Creative Design Contest
Event: Contest Sponsor of Graphic Design Group Writing Project at JustCreativeDesign

What is Graphic Design Poster Competition on Veerle's Blog

Poster Design contest submission
Event: What is graphic design poster contest at Verlee’s Blog

Sunday, May 11, 2008

How to create Vector Photoshop Brush

Today I'm going to show you how to create vector photoshop brush. You have probably know, that you can define anykind of graphic image as photoshop brush. If you want to create a specific graphic object with your own creativity... Why don't you start it by creating a vector graphic using Adobe Illustrator? My photoshop brush set collections set are done primarilly by Illustrator. Why? It is simply because Illustrator has a lot better tools to draw a graphic object from scratch than Photoshop. This kind of graphic that is made in Illustrator, will be known as vector graphic. Lets begin the tutorial now!

Step 1 - Draw an image vector using Illustrator
Use black foreground and white background when you start. This is important to have sharp contrast when you are going to define your brush set in Photoshop.
Resize the vector graphic using Scale Tool (s) if you want to set the brush set in certain resolution.

Step 2 - Saving the file as EPS format
After you are finished editing your vector graphic in Illustrator, save the file as EPS format, then open it in Photoshop.
As you can see, by default there your EPS file will show no background because Photoshop only capture the black shiluette of your graphcis and the white background will be converted as transparent.

Step 3 - Defining Brush Preset
In the Photoshop menu, go to the menu Edit > Define Brush Preset, and name your brush as your wish. Below the thumbnail view of your brush, you can see its resolution.

If you want to be sure that your Photoshop brush has already listed in the set picker, just find to the Photoshop brush option and click the little arrow shown below:

Step 4 - Saving the Brush Set
In the Photoshop menu, go to the menu Edit > Preset Manager. On the Preset Manager dialogue box, select "Brushes" Preset Type and choose the brush you want to save. If you want to select multiple brushes, just hold shift key and click the brush thumbnail inside the preset box one by one. Push the "Save Set" button, and you will have the brush set saved as .ABR file.

Voilà! there you go! you are now having a vector photoshop brush now and it is ready to use :D

Related Post:

Web Design Review: ANIMATRICK.com

As I've started to get involved more into Blog Catalog Graphic Design Group, the members of this group has growing now and we have 198 members already. I always expecting something new in this group, as usual I came across to see some feedback and comments, and happy that I got a unique link-bait from Animatrick.com. From the first time this group is dedicated to all designers or blog authors who always need resourceful websites, either from a group discussion, special events, or even a design blog promotion.

Animatrick.com has invited all the group members to have cross reviewed blog, (especially if you have PR 2 blog). I think this is a wonderful idea, because by doing this you can have more people to give constructive criticism over your blog or website in detailed explanation. Getting another comment in a different point of views and hopefully you can have better designed website and good quality of content in the future.

Animatrick.com is a resource website of WYSIWYG ADOBE Tutorials for After Effects, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere and Sound. Parviz is the founder of this cool website.

The website logo header is unique in design and concept. By adapting "A" typeface on crimson color background and the magician hat with the magic stick. This concept is able to drive viewer's attention to understand the idea of this website, that Animatrick.com is a website with resourceful tricks and tips for every designer.

The layout is dominated in white, the main content is placed on the left and the two wide sidebars are on the right side. At the first glance, this layout looks clean and properly arranged. As you can see, there are white spaces everywhere to avoid the clutters. Nice and neat typo hierarchy. Featured of popular tutorial on the very left sidebar is another way to make easier to navigate the most visited page using thumbnail pictures of tutorials. It would be better, if these pictures have some kind of title tag for each link.

You can browse the graphic tutorials by category and they are the tutorials are:

After effects
Flash
Illustrator
Photoshop
Premiere
Sound
Articles

Another feature in Animatrick and of course good news for you who runs a graphic design blog is Animatrick Web Directory. This directory will bring benefit to you, when you want to grow your traffic, reputation and page rank with a listing in our web directory. Free and featured listings are available. You can also submit your site for Weekly Competition. Recently, Animatrick.com has been also inviting you to join banner exchange program.
Cool things ;)

However, I have another opinion for the Animatrick.com. I found out that this website is build with layout tables instead of using CSS. It is also surprising me that the tutorials and articles are put on the main content using frames and scrolls. The reason I brought this into the review, is this website may have more advantages if the founder cold somehow redesign it or rebuild it using pure CSS mark up. There is a great old article from A List Apart: Where you can find the differences between table and semantic markup, at the implementation level.

I have to say that this website is way too wide for small screen user. I think rebalancing the two sidebars as, when the very left sidebar is built in 330px and the next one is just 250px, will somehow decrease the website's width into something that is comfortable enough for the readers.

Another thing is the navigation menu on the top right of the layout. As the width of this website is almost 1200px, it took me a while to seek the "Home" link when I was landed on tutorials section. I was using small width screen, when I realized later on that by scrolling to the right I finally found the navigation links. These links are better seen if they are designed on tabs menu as I've seen poor contrast quality of the links typography with the dark background of the header.

Somehow these sorts of design review are meant for positive intentions ;)
I just wish Parvis best of luck with everything that has been done to the website so far and to promote Animatrick.com.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The First PSDTUTS Contest!

Are you ready with another graphic design contest? PSDTUTS has started a contest that is so easy to join. The theme of this first month is Learning and Applying Your Knowledge. They will be looking at how you take techniques learned from any tutorial on PSDTUTS and apply it in your own work.

After you create an entry, be a member of PSDTUTS Flickr group and upload your submission to your Flickr account and place it in the PSDTUTS pool. There is no limit on the number of entries you can submit.

The deadline will be by the End of May. This means that the last day for all submissions is May 31st, 2008.

The announcement of the winner and showcase the top work will be posted during the first week of June.

Read the rest of the announcement and the list of awesome prizes on PSDTUTS and be inspired with the recent entries update now!

Visit PSDTUTS Contest Submissions Update where you can see the entries submitted by amazing graphic designers.

Meanwhile, here are my favorite entries on the PSDTUTS pool May contest and start your own entry right away!